Silvestre relives Ferguson throwing boot at Beckham

28 April 2009 - 10:46

Former Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre has relived the day he saw Sir Alex Ferguson hurl a football boot at David Beckham and claimed that the legendary Scot was ‘really something’ in the dressing room. The infamous episode happened at half-time in a 2003 FA Cup defeat at the hands of Silvestre’s current club Arsenal, when Ferguson burst into the Old Trafford dressing room and inflicted his renowned hair-dryer treatment on his underperforming players.

Speaking to French publication L’Equipe, Silvestre remembered:

“I was taking my boots off myself, when he stormed in.

"He was irritated, but he wasn’t intending to injure him [Beckham].

"He often threw things in the dressing room, but that day he happened to throw a boot at the player he was talking to!”

Beckham was later pictured leaving Old Trafford with two carefully placed steri-strips across his forehead and a face of thunder. The episode is widely thought to have signified the beginning of the end for the England midfielder's time as a Red Devil and he was sold to Real Madrid the following summer for £25m.